Financial-market wise guys, who had been seized with fear, are suddenly drunk with hope. They are rallying explosively because they think they have successfully stampeded Washington into accepting the Wall Street Journal solution to the crisis: dump it all on the taxpayers. That is the meaning of the massive bailout Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson has shopped around Congress. It would relieve the major banks and investment firms of their mountainous rotten assets and make the public swallow their losses--many hundreds of billions, maybe much more. What's not to like if you are a financial titan threatened with extinction?

Mark Ames: John McCain is making a big show of criticizing the government "bailout" of insurance giant AIG. But it turns out that AIG is one of the largest donors to his pet think-tank.
*

If Wall Street gets away with this, it will represent an historic swindle of the American public--all sugar for the villains, lasting pain and damage for the victims. My advice to Washington politicians: Stop, take a deep breath and examine what you are being told to do by so-called "responsible opinion." If this deal succeeds, I predict it will become a transforming event in American politics--exposing the deep deformities in our democracy and launching a tidal wave of righteous anger and popular rebellion. As I have been saying for several months, this crisis has the potential to bring down one or both political parties, take your choice.

Christopher Whalen of Institutional Risk Analytics, a brave conservative critic, put it plainly: "The joyous reception from Congressional Democrats to Paulson's latest massive bailout proposal smells an awful lot like yet another corporatist lovefest between Washington's one-party government and the Sell Side investment banks."

A kindred critic, Josh Rosner of Graham Fisher in New York, defined the sponsors of this stampede to action: "Let us be clear, it is not citizen groups, private investors, equity investors or institutional investors broadly who are calling for this government purchase fund. It is almost exclusively being lobbied for by precisely those institutions that believed they were 'smarter than the rest of us,' institutions who need to get those assets off their balance sheet at an inflated value lest they be at risk of large losses or worse."

Let me be clear. The scandal is not that government is acting. The scandal is that government is not acting forcefully enough--using its ultimate emergency powers to take full control of the financial system and impose order on banks, firms and markets. Stop the music, so to speak, instead of allowing individual financiers and traders to take opportunistic moves to save themselves at the expense of the system. The step-by-step rescues that the Federal Reserve and Treasury have executed to date have failed utterly to reverse the flight of investors and banks worldwide from lending or buying in doubtful times. There is no obvious reason to assume this bailout proposal will change their minds, though it will certainly feel good to the financial houses that get to dump their bad paper on the government.

A serious intervention in which Washington takes charge would, first, require a new central authority to supervise the financial institutions and compel them to support the government's actions to stabilize the system. Government can apply killer leverage to the financial players: accept our objectives and follow our instructions or you are left on your own--cut off from government lending spigots and ineligible for any direct assistance. If they decline to cooperate, the money guys are stuck with their own mess. If they resist the government's orders to keep lending to the real economy of producers and consumers, banks and brokers will be effectively isolated, therefore doomed.

Only with these conditions, and some others, should the federal government be willing to take ownership--temporarily--of the rotten financial assets that are dragging down funds, banks and brokerages. Paulson and the Federal Reserve are trying to replay the bailout approach used in the 1980s for the savings and loan crisis, but this situation is utterly different. The failed S&Ls held real assets--property, houses, shopping centers--that could be readily resold by the Resolution Trust Corporation at bargain prices. This crisis involves ethereal financial instruments of unknowable value--not just the notorious mortgage securities but various derivative contracts and other esoteric deals that may be virtually worthless.

Despite what the pols in Washington think, the RTC bailout was also a Wall Street scandal. Many of the financial firms that had financed the S&L industry's reckless lending got to buy back the same properties for pennies from the RTC--profiting on the upside, then again on the downside. Guess who picked up the tab? I suspect Wall Street is envisioning a similar bonanza--the chance to harvest new profit from their own fraud and criminal irresponsibility.

If government acts responsibly, it will impose some other conditions on any broad rescue for the bankers. First, take due bills from any financial firms that get to hand off their spoiled assets, that is, a hard contract that repays government from any future profits once the crisis is over. Second, when the politicians get around to reforming financial regulations and dismantling the gimmicks and "too big to fail" institutions, Wall Street firms must be prohibited from exercising their usual manipulations of the political system. Call off their lobbyists, bar them from the bribery disguised as campaign contributions. Any contact or conversations between the assisted bankers and financial houses with government agencies or elected politicians must be promptly reported to the public, just as regulated industries are required to do when they call on government regulars.

More important, if the taxpayers are compelled to refinance the villains in this drama, then Americans at large are entitled to equivalent treatment in their crisis. That means the suspension of home foreclosures and personal bankruptcies for debt-soaked families during the duration of this crisis. The debtors will not escape injury and loss--their situation is too dire--but they deserve equal protection from government, the chance to work out things gradually over some years on reasonable terms.

The government, meanwhile, may have to create another emergency agency, something like the New Deal, that lends directly to the real economy--businesses, solvent banks, buyers and sellers in consumer markets. We don't know how much damage has been done to economic growth or how long the cold spell will last, but I don't trust the bankers in the meantime to provide investment capital and credit. If necessary, Washington has to fill that role, too.

Finally, the crisis is global, obviously, and requires concerted global action. Robert A. Johnson, a veteran of global finance now working with the Campaign for America's Future, suggests that our global trading partners may recognize the need for self-interested cooperation and can negotiate temporary--maybe permanent--reforms to balance the trading system and keep it functioning, while leading nations work to put the global financial system back in business.

The agenda is staggering. The United States is ill equipped to deal with it smartly, not to mention wisely. We have a brain-dead lame duck in the White House. The two presidential candidates are trapped by events, trying to say something relevant without getting blamed for the disaster. The people should make themselves heard in Washington, even if only to share their outrage.

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believe is false."- William Casey, CIA Director 1981

What's at the bottom of all this, Well, obviously crooks; Just in case you had any doubts, it's the same shady people now as before who are making money from this; "I did not invest a single dollar in Global Crossing because when I did my due diligence I found that there were 27 former Milken co-defendants involved in it."

Money is power, but until the public *really* sees it and it hurts them personally, I doubt much will change. It drives me mad when people use the defence that "people should be able to keep the money they earn". I agree to a point, but when our society lets too few people hold too much power, it's much harder to take it back. I'm fine with people being so wealthy they and their children can live their whole lives in the lap of luxury, but we're pushing it way past that point where money just keeps making money. That obviously does not help the society which is the system.

I have said it before and I will say it again. The republicans and the democrats are two sides of the same wooden nickel. If you vote for either one of them you have wasted your vote. A lot of people would vote for one of the other candidates but they say to themselves that there is no chance for that candidate to win so they try to pick from the lesser of two evils and waste their vote.

"U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson would have sweeping powers over the massive war chest and his decisions WOULD NOT be reviewed by any court, according to a copy of the draft legislation obtained by Reuters."

What the hell is the matter with all of you people? I've worked on Wall Street for years, and yes, I am a millionaire. So what? If it wasn't for those of us who actually pay taxes, the rest of you slackers (and vertually everyone who works for the BMOrg's DPW) there wouldn't be an event like Burning Man. Can I prove that? Well, no. But considering that in Barbie Death Camp alone there must be no fewer than six or seven millionaires, and all the wine we give away, I should think you people would be happy! Goddamn liberals.

Dr. Pyro wrote:What the hell is the matter with all of you people? I've worked on Wall Street for years, and yes, I am a millionaire. So what? If it wasn't for those of us who actually pay taxes, the rest of you slackers (and vertually everyone who works for the BMOrg's DPW) there wouldn't be an event like Burning Man. Can I prove that? Well, no. But considering that in Barbie Death Camp alone there must be no fewer than six or seven millionaires, and all the wine we give away, I should think you people would be happy! Goddamn liberals.

Thanks for paying my taxes, Pyro!

700 Billion Dollars worth!

But you don't have to take away Shorts and blame the crises on them. These Subprime lenders were the real predators signing up people they knew would default! Like sheep to the lions. But now I'm suppose to be the bad guy for Shorting. What I'm doing is legal and theyre fair game! Since I don't have any feelings for them taking advantage of the home buyer, I have none for them. I profit from their mistakes! They are the bad guys not the Short Sellers like me. I'm the little guy taking advantage of the system as they had set it. Now they're caught and now they want to change the rules!

The Lions get the sheep and they get the bailout. The sheep get shit and the support from the government to help them keep their houses will ultimately fail.

Granted I'm not totally against the bailout. We don't need a total collapse. But the people that allowed this to happen should be prosecuted and jail!

Now they are going to set up a discount clearing house for mortgage bankruptcy assets.

mister big will NOT hesitate to fucking screw you over every god damn chance he gets
HEY LETS RAISE THEIR INTEREST RATE WHEN THEY'RE NOT LOOKING, WE'LL MAKE A PILE MONEY!
fuck em with a big jagged stick
Fuck your GOD DAMN teaser rate you ruined a once proud country possibly forever you will burn in hell

Dr. Pyro wrote:What the hell is the matter with all of you people? I've worked on Wall Street for years, and yes, I am a millionaire. So what? If it wasn't for those of us who actually pay taxes, the rest of you slackers (and vertually everyone who works for the BMOrg's DPW) there wouldn't be an event like Burning Man. Can I prove that? Well, no. But considering that in Barbie Death Camp alone there must be no fewer than six or seven millionaires, and all the wine we give away, I should think you people would be happy! Goddamn liberals.

was that Napa Valley or Sonoma?

and i dont care HOW many wine critics he's bought off, but the crap that Coppola's putting out is shit in a glass....

What the hell is the matter with all of you people? I've worked on Wall Street for years, and yes, I am a millionaire. So what? If it wasn't for those of us who actually pay taxes, the rest of you slackers (and vertually everyone who works for the BMOrg's DPW) there wouldn't be an event like Burning Man.

I find that hilarious. What service do you provide to the country other than skimming off people who do real work then giving a small portion of what you skimmed from workers to the government? Your job is part of our system and I don't blame you for making money from the system, but it's funny that you think you're actually the one who's providing services for this country!

Our whole system of currency is crap. It's probably the best thing we've come up with, but it's still crap.

In the movie Men in Black, Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones team up to
save the world by resolute preventive action. By contrast, America's
real-life Men in Black--Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson, Federal Reserve
Chair Ben Bernanke and New York Fed President Timothy Geithner--haven't
done as well lately. Ever since that classical day of reckoning, the
Ides of March 2008, when the terrifying specter of chain bankruptcy and
currency collapse first loomed over lower Manhattan like an attacking
spaceship because of Bear Stearns, it's been downhill.

A little over a week ago, the Men in Black made a fatal mistake.
They allowed the aliens to vaporize the proud old firm of Lehman
Brothers. Whole fleets of spaceships then immediately began attacking
AIG, Wachovia, Washington Mutual, even Morgan Stanley and Goldman,
Sachs. Now desperate, the Men in Black switched back to their old
tactics and rescued AIG, but the damage had been done. The aliens had
learned from Lehman and AIG how vulnerable Wall Street really was. Soon
inter-bank markets everywhere in the world locked up. With financiers
preferring treasuries that paid essentially nothing to every other asset
in the world, huge runs started on money market funds.

In response, the Men in Black have now gone to Congress. They have
put a check for $700 billion and a loaded gun on the table. Sign the
check, they insist, and give us unreviewable power to buy bad assets, or
take responsibility for the collapse of the whole financial system and,
likely, the world economy.

In America's money-driven political system, leaders of both parties
love to pretend that the sound of money talking is the voice of the
people. Both presidential candidates and Democratic Congressional
leaders are mostly nodding, with the Democrats adding trademarked noises
about balancing off gifts to Wall Street with mortgage relief, another
small economic stimulus program and perhaps some curbs on executive
pay. Meantime, save for a handful of splendid exceptions, notably
Gretchen Morgenstern of the New York Times, American newspapers just
keep giving their readers more reasons to keep deserting them.

Actually, there are one or two things to like in the Men in Black's
latest scheme for the Mother of All Bailouts. The economic case for
single-payer insurance has always been overwhelming. With all the new
precedents--Bear Stearns, Fannie, Freddie, AIG, and one, two, three, many more
coming-- who would now dare deny the American people a chance for
similar efficiencies in health insurance?

We also confess to having a soft spot for the New Deal--that
remarkable moment that gives the lie to all of today's fashionable
sneers about the impossibility of effective financial regulation. We
just wish that the Men in Black would draw inspiration from something
besides the anachronistic language of the Gold Reserve Act of 1934,
which tried to make Treasury's decisions about the Exchange
Stabilization Fund unreviewable by anyone else. (See the new plan's
incredible Section 8, something you would think only Dick Cheney could
love.)

And who can deny it? All the "Comrade Paulson" jokes should at least
be good for a decent respite from Market Fundamentalism--the notion
that unregulated markets automatically give you full employment and
economic stability. Right now every individual financial institution is
deleveraging--that is, reducing its use of borrowed money--at a
terrifying pace. Financial houses are trying to recapitalize themselves
by gouging depositors, borrowers, investors and credit card holders. As
a group, they cannot succeed. They are collectively digging themselves
into a black hole in which the gain of one is the loss of another,
unless somebody from outside puts in new money.

Paulson does not exaggerate when he implies that just soldiering on
and letting markets work will trigger a depression and collapse of the
currency. But if it's high time for some Big Government, the Men in
Black's plan is not the way to go, unless you work on Wall Street. And
even if you do, there are compelling reasons to fear it.

The plan's belated focus on a systemic solution designed to reopen
money and financial markets to normal transactions is exactly right.
Currently there is simply too much junk out there for anyone in money
markets to be sure of getting repaid if they loan to anyone else, even
overnight. Everyone knows that other institutions are full of bad assets
that are hugely depressed; but each sees for sure only their own
desperate condition. So nobody trusts anybody.

But there is more than one way to restore trust and restart markets.
Alas, not only is the plan the Men in Black are pushing the most
expensive and likely to soak average Americans the most, but it is also
the most likely to fail.

What Might Work

You could simply take a leaf from the New Deal and do
a bank holiday. That is, send bank examiners into all the institutions--
investment houses, and insurance companies and the other major players,
as well as banks--to assess them. Insolvent ones are simply closed;
everyone knows then that those that survive are solvent. Economic life
restarts. The total cost is minimal. In the nineties, under Greenspan,
the Fed ran away from its duty to oversee primary dealers in government
securities. Voting it sufficient authority to do the job not just on
Wall Street and the banks, but in any part of the system not covered by
effective regulators would be far less expensive than the Men in Black's
scheme.

Guess why Wall Street hates this one and why Bernanke (whose work on
the New Deal is indeed distinguished, though many of his hypotheses have
since been refuted ) and Paulson do not even consider it. In all
likelihood much of the Street is insolvent, which is why short-sellers
were going wild until the SEC banned restricted them.

The government could inject capital directly into financial institutions
with a reasonable prospect of survival in the long run. This was the
essence of Senator Schumer's proposal that surfaced just ahead of
Paulson's announcement and that triggered the rally in world financial
markets. The New Deal did this, too. It used the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation, which put severe terms on the banks receiving the aid. Wall
Street, of course, would love the money, but not the terms. Somebody to
inspect and certify the solvency of financial houses is also a requisite
for this option, which, as already noted, is anathema to the Street.

The Men in Black's choice: just have the government buy the junk, giving
Wall Street real money--our money--in exchange for it. Notice three
points about this one: First, the lucky firms continue merrily in
business. Thus far Paulson and Bernanke's plan does not even pay lip
service to reforms. It is also well to remember that as the crisis hit,
Paulson was at work on a preposterous scheme calling for more
deregulation on grounds that New York faced competition from foreign
financial markets. It is obvious where the former Goldman Sachs CEO's
heart lies.

Second, there is a truly alarming likelihood that $700 billion
will probably not be enough. Estimates of the total amount of junk out
there vary, but the key point to hold fast to is that Bernanke, Paulson,
and most financial experts have consistently underestimated the problem.
Nor is there any reason to believe their forecasting is improving. Less
than a fortnight ago, as Lehman was let go, the Fed was boasting that it
now had a much better grip on markets than it did when Bear Stearns went
down. It seems clear that even under this option, the bank inspectors
had better be unleashed before much money goes out the door. Otherwise,
we may well end in the worst of all possible worlds: the $700 billion is
gone, but trust in the money markets remains elusive.

Third, the draft plan is silent on the prices at which assets are
to be bought and, presumably later, resold. The problem of possible
sweetheart deals is real and has to be addressed. Already there are
reports on the web that the Treasury believes such methods are really
rough-and-ready ways to get aid to firms that need it. There is also
little doubt that politics colored some assets sales by the Resolution
Trust Corporation, set up during George H.W. Bush's administration to
dispose of debris from the S&amp;L crisis.

Under both options 2 and 3 above, it is vital that Congress insist
on reasonable terms for the public. Just as with Bear Stearns, the mere
announcement of the bailout sent financial markets around the world
soaring. There is absolutely no reason why some of the gains accruing
both to private investors in the companies directly being bailed out and
the broader market cannot be recaptured for taxpayers whose money makes
it all possible.

It is easy. You can do it, for example, by taking equity in the
firms you bail out and selling later. We prefer this to warrants, which
are rights to buy shares at a low price that ensure a gain when they are
finally exercised. Our fear is that coalitions of firms will do what
Chrysler did and organize later to pressure the government not to
exercise the warrants. Because there will be many of them, they are more
likely to succeed.

It also makes sense to insist that firms receiving aid issue senior
debt to the government with rights over all other bonds, etc., they have
outstanding. That's to make sure some money comes back right from the
start and that managements cannot keep all the earnings for themselves
by reducing accounting profits and paying themselves more.

To recapture some of the broader market gains flowing from the
injection of public money, one could place a modest new tax on interest,
dividends, capital gains. "Carried interest," the ludicrous special tax
break for private equity and hedge funds that not only Republicans but
Senator Schumer and other Democratic Congressional leaders continue to
defend, should go as part of any political deal on a bailout. It is
beyond crazy to ask American workers to subsidize firms that will soon
be back trying to break up their firms and throw their rescuers out of
work.

And finally, obviously, it is necessary to re-regulate. Details of
some reforms might require time to work out, though we see no reason
they should be any more intractable than details of a bailout, which
Paulson and Bernanke want to do almost overnight. Our general view is
that handing out money before nailing down reforms is too dangerous;
Congress should legislate at least the basics, with a promise to fix
details later. If Wall Street does not like it, it does not have to
accept the money.

It helps that the main reforms necessary are obvious. Compensation
practices that encourage taking big risks that blow up after bonuses are
paid have to go, immediately. Limits on leverage--how much financial
institutions can borrow--are another no-brainer. Probably there is also
need for new rules on reserve requirements across the board and
restrictions on the use of insured deposits.

Above all, trading in complex derivatives--the main cause of the
current disaster--has to be completely overhauled, at once. Derivatives
have to be standardized and move to public exchanges that collectively
guarantee them. Failure to do this will just start the whole nonsense
over again. Just imagine being told a year from now that losses on
credit default swaps written by firms that were bailed out under the new
plan require us to pony up still more cash.

Congressional Options

It is fine for Democrats to hold out for mortgage relief and for
another stimulus package. The best way to do the first, probably, is by
reviving something like the Home Owners Loan Corporation that worked so
well in the New Deal. That bought mortgages from people who were in
danger of losing their houses and converted them into obligations that
they could afford to repay. This sort of bailout has the wonderful
property of directing public money to the public, rather than Wall
Street. But it would still bail out Wall Street, since reviving housing
and stopping mortgage defaults feeds directly through to mortgage bonds
values and derivatives based on them.

But no one should be fooled by Democratic talk about mortgage relief
and economic stimulus. The main focus of the design of the bailout must
be the bailout itself. That is the rat hole down which $700 billion and
probably plenty more will soon start disappearing if Congressman Barney
Frank, Senator Dodd and, of course, Senator Obama do not walk the walk
instead of just talking the talk.

The situation is dire, but it is not hopeless. A flurry of
discussions with other central banks and governments may soon produce
claims that international agreements hem in legislators here. Congress
has a straightforward counter to this and any manipulative threats of
economic collapse: Turn the gun around. Move every bit as speedily as
Paulson and Bernanke demand, but pass a bill that anyone can see
protects the public far better than the Men in Black's proposal. If
President Bush--remember him?--refuses to sign it, make it obvious to
voters who's really crashing the system for private gain. All of the
House and a third of the Senate are up for re-election. Enough votes can
probably be found from among Republicans who would like to survive a
Democratic landslide to pass something far better than the Men in
Black's bridge loan to nowhere.

Cowboyangel, that's quite a composition. So far the foreign banks aren't going for it. The plan shows some very good ideas. It also leaves out too many considerations.

I'll start with basics because it takes a while to get my mind up to speed. Very simplified.
People who work create wealth,,,, the worker class. If they create more than they consume, they automatically become the investor class [unless they discover cocaine or buy race horses] The investor class uses money or barter to create more industry and wealth. This is all OK.
Then along come the bankers. The bankers manage some of the wealth of the investors. Not content with this quantity of wealth, they also create debt. They do their best to retain the wealth and just pass around debt. Bankers don't ever create wealth except by proxy using the wealth of the investor class. As substitutes for wealth [paper money] become universally accepted, the bankers are able to create almost unlimited amounts of debt. The wealth of the banks comes from slowly sucking the life out of the economy produced by the working class. Then along comes GOV. It started out more or less benevolent but became self-serving later on.
So, we have both GOV and banking sucking the life out of the economy. Since debt creation is always a Ponzi scheme, GOV and, to a certain extent banking, need an always growing group of participants.
GOV/ banks have never really cared how bad they screwed the people. What other choice did we have? In response, the west and Japan have gone into population decline.
GOV /banking have to deal with a shrinking population/workforce along with automation. They blow bubbles to try to preserve capital. They increase immigration.
The European banks [FED] are hoping to take over control of our entire financial system. They have to grow or die.
In their short-sighted battle for control, they've forgotten that without the working class, there isn't any wealth for them to steal. The shit-for-brains bankers want us to take on huge debt burdens. Who's going to pay them back in the long term if we don't have any kids? Who's going to pay them back in the short term if we don't have any jobs.

The US already has a debt burden that is so big, there is no possibility of repaying. The world bankers are fighting over an economy that can't create jobs. Without jobs, the price of housing won't come back.
After 18 years of recovery, commercial property prices in Tokyo are at 1% of bubble prices,,, residential at 10%. There are 250,000 fewer Japanese men every year.

Our future unfunded liabilities are $92 trillion. It looks to me that we are trying to suck every last penny out of our lenders with NO possibility of repaying.
The only possibility of repaying would be at the expense of executing every non-working person over 50. That would definitely free up some capital.
Any ideas?
Dan

I don't post things because I believe that they are the absolute truth. I post them because I believe that they should be considered.